Seriously, Designers Need Dynamic Imaging
By: Amanda Ross | May 13, 2020 | 6 Min Read
Take what you think you know about design and be prepared for a rude, but helpful, awakening.
As a designer, you are taught to master the use of one product suite; becoming proficient in everything and being able to craft anything. There is a lot to be said for a designer who is able to create the visuals of a product on its journey from beginning to end.
There are some downsides to the creation process—from relying on other departments, to brand unification, to urgent last minute changes. These factors push the designer to step back in the process with the need to recreate a handful, or even hundreds, of images.
Before I started at LiquidPixels, I was that designer. The master of the suite of tools at my disposal; able to craft any product need with enough time or hours. I quickly learned that all of the years of schooling and past job experience came into question as LiquiFire® OS challenged what I thought my workflow could actually be.
Here's why—quick story, then my checklist. I've worked on a few projects over the years where products needed to be recolored, wrapped in images, or engraved. As a designer, this is no problem. I can easily engrave and wrap text and it might sort of look believable. The downside is, once I've saved the large high-res image, I then need to save the file for web, downsize again for the thumbnail, then finally save another size for other promotional marketing needs. Finding myself at about a dozen or so photos that I need to then manage.
The tricky part with it all, is that the images or packaging may need to change. If a spec is wrong on a product label—that we already have a dozen or more photos of—then the designer needs to go back and update the label, reproduce the photo in all of those sizes and specifications, extending the workflow time to be less efficient.
What if you could do all of that by changing a single line of text?
Mind-blowing right? I was skeptical, too. As a designer I thought, "No wait, that’s weird, that can’t be right," but I was proven wrong. So much so, that it led me to rethink how designers need to understand and really capitalize on dynamic imaging.
Top ten reasons why a designer needs dynamic imaging:
- Exporting images in every format, size, and variation needed doesn't have to be painful or lengthy.
Designers rely heavily on shortcuts, which ironically can sometimes slow them down. LiquiFire OS allows you to change one word in a LiquiFire Image Chain™, click a button, and you're done. It's that simple.
- Rely on the software to be smarter than you, and that is okay.
This is a tough one, because there is no designer on the planet who is capable of exporting imagery for every single device on the market. It is a painstakingly difficult process—but there is a solution for that. LiquiFire Resolve™ automatically detects the device that a user is on and scales the image to the optimal size.
- Wrapping anything around an object doesn’t have to look just passable.
Face it, designers have all searched for how to wrap text or a pattern around an object. Honestly, it takes a long time to get pretty good at it. LiquiFire OS has the tools needed to wrap anything—patterns, text, full labels—to compose an accurate render on both 2D and 3D objects.
- No more color guessing.
This one is important, especially for those in the web-to-print world where color is key. Designers can only really guess what a customer meant by “olive” or “light green.” LiquiFire OS has full color management capabilities. Read my other blog Use Color to Create Infinite Possibilities where I talk about this amazing feature in detail.
- Engraving, embossing, and stylized text simplified.
You do not have to download anything additional, add it into the software, and hope that it matches what you need. With just a few lines within a LiquiFire Image Chain, stylized word formatting can be easily achieved in seconds.
- LiquiFire Image Chains are understandable—even if you’re not a coder.
Coding for designers is something that is becoming more and more popular as the digital age thrives. For some, coding can be daunting; a real difficult thing to master. Even though LiquiFire Image Chains are what some would consider code, it’s not, it’s more of a simple recipe that is read as a person would talk, instructing LiquiFire OS to go get an image and then create something new from it.
- Fabric- and pattern-draping look real.
It is up to designers to show new patterns, fabrics, and colors for e-commerce products or marketing. But realistically draping fabric can be daunting and take hours. Using LiquiFire OS, I can make a grid to realistically drape any pattern I want, and there is no need to warp it in any way to make it “look real.”
- Update image renders in real-time.
One of the nicest features of dynamic imaging is that everything can update in real-time. Designers don’t need to worry about saving, exporting, and uploading new images. They change a line in a LiquiFire Image Chain and poof—it is like magic and updates instantly online.
- Emails that actually utilize and show custom data.
Email marketing is far from gone, and now more than ever it is vital for designers to craft emails that truly engage subscribers. People expect a personalized experience when they open emails and LiquiFire OS can render custom images using data from your CRMs. If it is known that Penelope loves pink based on her previous purchases, all future emails she receives can utilize that data to show her only the latest items available in pink. This works for any piece of data specific to the user and available to you. Multiple emails do not need to be created; send Penelope her pink-centric email while sending Bill the same email but with his preferred color of green. See this nifty infographic about it here: Real Time Inbox with LiquiFire OS Infographic
- More than just editing images.
What do I mean by this? LiquiFire OS not only helps improve your production workflow, it follows through the entire enterprise ecosystem—including the purchasing journey, making its way to the customers hand, and cycling back for re-marketing as well. Your entire sales, marketing, and manufacturing workflows can be automated through implementing LiquiFire OS.
There is so much information out there to help companies streamline their overall workflows. Feel at ease with LiquiFire OS, the single solution that covers every corner of production to reduce the burden on designers and manage efficiency from pre to post. There is a way to improve work life and really make technology work for you, instead of a program crashing and then waiting for it to (hopefully) recover what was hours of work.
If you’re interested in reading more about the benefits of LiquiFire OS, then take a look at this infographic made by the Marketing & Design team here at LiquidPixels, one I am proud to be a part of. Let us help you achieve success and a little less stress.
Questions? Let us know. Reach out to us on any of our social platforms or email us at sales@liquidpixels.com. Our team understands how frustrating crafting the right imagery for your customers can be, and we can help you with a solution.